Quotes About Computers

With genetic engineering, we will be able to increase the complexity of our DNA, and improve the human race. But it will be a slow process, because one will have to wait about 18 years to see the effect of changes to the genetic code. By contrast, computers double their speed and memories every 18 months. There is a real danger that computers will develop intelligence and take over. We urgently need to develop direct connections to the brain so that computers can add to human intelligence rather than be in opposition.

Books can accommodate the proximity of computers but it doesn't seem to work the other way around. Computers now literally drive out books from the place that should, by definition, be books' own home: the library.

It's a very special generation, because during our careers the computer entered chess. So we know how to play without computers, which is also important. We can analyse without computers. I am not saying that younger players cannot do this, but we are more in the habit of doing this. That's important to improve your chess understanding.

Right up till the 1980s, SF envisioned giant mainframe computers that ran everything remotely, that ingested huge amounts of information and regurgitated it in startling ways, and that behaved (or were programmed to behave) very much like human beings... Now we have 14-year-olds with more computing power on their desktops than existed in the entire world in 1960. But computers in fiction are still behaving in much the same way as they did in the Sixties. That's because in fiction [artificial intelligence] has to follow the laws of dramatic logic, just like human characters.

We created computers as an extension of our brains, and now we're connecting through those computers and the Internet cloud as a way of expanding them.

One of the best things I ever did was to train in a practical skill. I love computers and they've become such a part of life, especially to the world of design. But it's important to understand that they are a tool, as much as a hammer or a saw is a tool. Computers don't help you design. There needs to be more emphasis on training young designers in how to build things. A good writer needs a good vocabulary. A good designer needs to understand his materials and processes. You can't, as a successful designer, pretend to get any respect if you don't know how things are made.

The first thing to note is that pornography and many abductions occur apart from the use of computers, and that most child abuse happens within the family. So I think the extra degree of danger that computers pose doesn't justify the frenzy.

I've been asked to explain why I don't worry much about the topics of privacy threat...One reason is that these scenarios seem to assume that there will be large, monolithic bureaucracies...that are capable of harnessing computers for one-way surveillance of an unsuspecting populace. I've come to feel that computation just doesn't work that way. Being afraid of monolithic organizations especially when they have computers, is like being afraid of really big gorillas especially when they are on fire.

We are reaching the stage where the problems we must solve are going to become insoluble without computers. I do not fear computers, I fear the lack of them.

It doesn't matter how many televisions and computers and pieces of stereo equipment the Chinese send to us, even if they're sending them to us only in return for some funny, little, green pieces of paper. That is a balanced trade. They got what they wanted: the green pieces of paper. We got what we wanted: the plush toys, the computers, the stereo components.

It seems that nearly every week there is a problem where information is leaked or computers hacked. I'm conscious of keeping my details as safe as possible. I might be old but I'm still bright and prefer to go into my local branch and see a face.

Computing is not about computers any more. It is about living.

We grew up in the good old days before kids had these damn computers and actually played outside.

The funny thing is that Sydney, who worked on the first film [Tron], developed a bike that had an exposed rider, but they couldn't do it because the computers weren't fast enough, so they gave it a roof, which became the iconic one. Ironically what we do now is basically what they envisioned in the first one but couldn't do technically. I mean this a full on homage in every aspect.

I don't even have cable anymore, or a television. I just watch on computers. It's clearly the future of where we're heading.

Computers don't seem real to me because there's a sheet of glass between you and whatever is happening.

I'm interested in all kinds of pictures, however they are made, with cameras, with paint brushes, with computers, with anything.

Computers are our only opponents that don't always have no excuse when losing against me.

Computers are no more able to create information than iPods are capable of creating music.

When I was in school, if you wanted a computer, you had to build one. But today, computers are everywhere. We're all obsessed with technology and having the latest gadgets. Nerd culture is ubiquitous.

Brains are tricky and adaptable organs. For all the 'neuroplasticity' allowing our brains to reconfigure themselves to the biases of our computers, we are just as neuroplastic in our ability to eventually recover and adapt.

I look like a geeky hacker but I don’t know anything about computers.

Computing is not about computers any more. It is about living. Whatever big problem you can imagine, from world peace to the environment to hunger to poverty, the solution always includes education, ... We need to depend more on peer-to-peer and self-driven learning. The laptop is one important means of doing that.

We're progressing on a lot of fronts, but on the aspect of your responsibility - just the very basics of how we treat each other - before we learn mathematics and computers and science in school, and languages and all of this, the basis of it: What is it to be a human? What responsibility do you have?

Computers can do better than ever what needn't be done at all. Making sense is still a human monopoly.

A lot of people who work in computers think that the world is like them.

Computers are everywhere and you can't even begin to function with a computer unless you have comprehension and an understanding of the English language.

There's so many things happening with computers and what-not, where we may be able to live until 150 and even longer, but if the planet's not here for us to live on it, if we burn ourselves out from global warming and everything else, if we don't figure that out, if we don't figure out an alternative form of energy, I think we're in big, fat trouble.

Learning how to code and program computers when I was a kid was one of the best choices I made growing up. By writing code, I learned how to bring my dreams to life, how to budget, and how to build stuff. Whatever path you choose in life - being an artist, an engineer, a lawyer, a teacher, or even a politician, you will give yourself a huge leg up if you learn how to code.

The fact that the infrastructure is falling apart is not necessarily because it's built poorly. The New York City subways were built in 1903. The fact that they're still running at all is an enormous success. The fact that New York City's bridges have held up as long as they have is extraordinary, and the engineers didn't have computers to tell them about tolerance. They overbuilt these things - traffic on them is like an ant on an elephant.

I know so many people who actually just watch television on their computers now and don't even really watch their TV anymore.

We have the ability, at such high fidelity, to simulate the physical world through computers. But when the spiritual world or human behavior comes into play, we don't have a very good model for that at all.

Training the workforce of tomorrow with today's high schools is like trying to teach kids about today's computers on a 50-year-old mainframe.

The question of whether computers can think is like the question of whether submarines can swim.

I was working on a piece for one of the things I was dancing to and I needed to have original music. I didn't know where to begin, I'm so bad at computers, and I remembered that he actually made music. I asked Astro Raw if he'd be interested in scoring and he said yes.

I tell adults about the experiences of more than a hundred teachers I've interviewed. They tell me that allowing the child to help them learn helped them become better teachers. That's because they no longer had to pretend they were the experts - not only about computers but about other things.

Computers can solve all kinds of problems except the unemployment problem they create.

The whole hardware industry has experienced the phenomenon in which every time computers get cheaper, they appeal to a new set of users; every time they get more powerful, old customers upgrade.

Ultimately, I consider people to be more important than computers.

They work now with computers for building buildings and books, but not ever with new ideas.

The technocrat is the natural friend of the dictator—computers and dictatorship; but the revolutionary lives in the gap which separates technical progress from social totality, and inscribed there his dream of permanent revolution. This dream, therefore, is itself action, reality, and an effective menace to all established order; it renders possible what it dreams about.

We invented our computers in the '80s. We networked them together in the '90s. Now we're giving them eyes, ears and sensory organs. And we're asking them to observe and manipulate the world on our behalf.

One day ladies will take their computers for walks in the park and tell each other, "My little computer said such a funny thing this morning".

Collections are certainly abundant online. It's complicated, because it's not like these people didn't want computers, although there was some nonchalance about it. I would sometimes ask the people I interviewed if they wished they had a computer, and in a lot of cases, it was like they couldn't process the question. You don't know what you don't have, I guess.

It was one thing to use computers as a tool, quite another to let them do your thinking for you.

We are the greatest computers in this world, but now we've created the smart phone which is smarter than us now, but we're still making dumb decisions. We have given our creations more power than we have, and that to me is dumb.

But I'm so slow on it because I find it terribly hard writing blind on computers. The computer speaks to me, but it's just so slow, I'm so terribly slow using it.

Let's also make sure that a high school diploma puts our kids on a path to a good job. Right now, countries like Germany focus on graduating their high school students with the equivalent of a technical degree from one of our community colleges, so that they're ready for a job. At schools like P-TECh in Brooklyn ... students will graduate with a high school diploma and an associate degree in computers or engineering. We need to give every American student opportunities like this.